Poetry and Poetics–Lit 204

In his poem “Tintern Abbey”, Wordsworth uses one technical device I found particularly intriguing: he switches the places of people and the natural world, so that nature is personified and humanity is, effectively, nature-ized. Wordsworth describes himself as wandering “like a cloud,” and describes the field of daffodils as a dancing crowd of people. This switch, personification and de-personification, implies a kind of interchangeability; metaphors from either sphere can be applied to the other, because the human mind and the natural world are fundamentally entwined. Wordsworth describes the air as “living” and himself as “like a roe/ bound[ing] o’er the mountains”. Each adjective enforces this spirit of connectedness, and ultimately, I think, makes the poem flow conceptually. Even the poem’s title, “Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” reflects nature’s integration into the fabric of the human world— Wordsworth composes the lines adjacent to ruins of an abbey, a place of human residence and worship, ultimately overtaken by nature. The natural world has filled the spaces which humans once occupied, with the abbey becoming a sort of perfect metaphor for the connectedness between nature, humanity, and the reverent spirit with which Wordsworth connects the two.

The most interesting part of Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” in my opinon, was towards the end of the poem, where he makes it clear that he is speaking to his sister. Up until this point, the poem focuses on the speaker’s changing relationship with nature: he compares his youthful love of pretty, pastoral scenes to his new relationship with nature, which involves a more emotional experience and inner connection. The speaker paints this as a consequence of life’s burden, the “heavy and weary weight/of all this unintelligible world” (ll. 39-40). However, the speaker’s sister is a living reminder of his younger perception of the world. Her presence brings back his younger self – he describes, “in thy voice I catch/ The language of my former heart, and read/My former pleasures in the shooting lights/Of thy wild eyes” (ll. 116-118). I think there is an interesting tension there – it’s never made explicit whether the sister is younger or older, and I think that distinction gives weight to different interpretations. If the sister is younger than the author, then it is possible that their relationship is similar to that seen in “I Have a Young Sister” from earlier this semester – the speaker could see himself and his youthfulness in his sister and be reminded in that sense. If the sister is similar in age or older, then it lends itself to a different reading – the sister could remind the speaker of his younger self because she’s known him in both forms. In some ways, siblings are the people that you know for the longest time – you meet them (often) before having any children and say goodbye to them (again, ordinarily) after any parents. In this sense, a sister could be a living capsule of memories that would contain the speaker at every point in his life, and therefore be a living reminder of his younger self. 

“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” deals with the speaker reflecting and coping with the death of his beloved. The poem offers a thought-provoking take on using the concept of slumber to symbolize the illusion of perpetual youth and protection against human mortality. I initially viewed death as an eternal slumber, but Wordsworth’s perspective suggests otherwise: he portrays life alongside his beloved as a dream-like state of slumber and is only able to wake up to confront the grief and stark truth of human mortality after the death of his beloved. In this way, he suggests that confronting death is the only way to break out of the slumber that seals our spirits from enlightenment. 

The first stanza describes the speaker with his spirit sealed in slumber, meaning his mind is protected from the idea of mortality. Here, “I had no human fears” (line 2), though seemingly resolute, actually underscores his resistance to acknowledging the harsh realities of existence. He idealizes his beloved as immortal, unaffected by the passage of earthly time. This illusion of immortality, initially used to protect the speaker, only ends up hurting him more once she passes away because it makes it harder to accept the truth. In the second stanza, he states the obvious, “No motion… no force; / She neither hears no sees” (lines 5-6). Having awoken from his prolonged slumber, he realizes his beloved, like all humans, was affected by “earth’s dinural course” (line 7). To cope with this, he redirects her existence into rocks, stones, and trees, implying that she has become part of the earth and lives on. 

When reading “London”, I was shocked by its cynical, negative tone, especially compared to his other poems like “The Tyger” and “The Lamb”. As I understood it, “London” is most literally about the city of London during Blake’s time. His view of the city is, apparently, a bleak one. Blake’s rather depressing diction expresses a certain turmoil about the very city itself; he uses the word cry in multiple instances, evoking images of both cries of anguish as well as tears of sadness. The poem presents multiple juxtapositions: the harsh reality of the city and the innocence of infants, the joy of marriage and the devastation of death, the highly controlled layout of London and the unbidden nature of a river, the content of the piece and its bouncy, rhythmic meter. The poem is full of contradictions that enrich its reading experience. It’s chaotic, busy, dark, and fast-paced. It’s a critique and a mimicry, all in one.

William Blake’s Introductory lyric to his collection “Songs of Innocence” presents a simple and sweet anecdote about divine guidance towards meaning. This poem consists of five quatrains, the first and fourth having an ABAB rhyme scheme and the remaining three an ABCB rhyme scheme. Blake embeds religious themes in this poem, most notably in the first and second stanzas, where the speaker describes being spoken too by a child in the clouds: “On a cloud I saw a child, / And he laughing said to me: / ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb:” (3-5). The religious nature of this encounter is bolstered by the mention of a lamb by the child, and emphasis is placed upon it by its capitalization. In the middle three stanzas of the poem, the speaker is instructed not only to “‘Pipe a song about a Lamb’” (5) but also to “Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe / Sing thy songs of happy chear” (9-10) and eventually told “‘Piper sit thee down and write / In a book that all may read–’” (13-14).

At first the child is trying to get the speaker to use their pipe, which makes sense as they are clearly a piper from context: “Piping down the valleys wild / Piping songs of pleasant glee” (1-2). However in the following lines the child encourages the speaker to abandon the pipe and instead to sing and write, which I found was a clever way of developing a theme. My interpretation was that the poem suggests that it is easy to misunderstand one’s gifts and in doing so miss out their potential. The piper/speaker wasn’t doing anything wrong by piping in the valleys, but by writing down their songs and singing them, they enabled more children to share in their gift. I think it’s also important to note that the child doesn’t force the speaker to do anything. The piper had no obligation to abide by the words of the child, but their openness and selflessness enabled them to recognize their chance to do more than they currently were. This notion of taking charge of one’s own role in the world is applicable far beyond a religious context which makes the message of the poem that much more valuable to those who don’t want to look to the heavens for guidance.